What an electronics lab really costs

Prices checked September 23, 2026. US list prices at quantity one, before tax, shipping and any education discount.

If you are a middle school, high school or community college teacher pricing an Arduino unit, this page is the arithmetic we would want to see before asking for money. Every price links to the retailer page it came from. Where there is no price to cite, such as how many LEDs a class burns out in a year, we say so and give you a number to change in the calculator instead of pretending to know.

We make Mokxi, a browser simulator, so we are not neutral. We have tried to write this so it is useful even if you end up buying every kit on it, and the page on simulating first and building second is our honest recommendation: most classes are better off with some real hardware, just less of it, bought later.

The short version

For 30 students in pairs, with 10% spare kits, a meter per pair and 3 shared benches with a scope, a logic analyzer, a function generator and a power supply, a hardware lab built on a $42.99 starter kit comes to about $3,701 before the first lesson and roughly $172 a year after that on our breakage and consumables guesses. That is $4,216 over 3 years, or $46.84 per student per year.

The same course in Mokxi is free for students. The Teacher plan, which adds rosters, submissions, automatic checks and a live class room, is $129 a year for up to 40 students: $387 over 3 years. Simulating first and then buying one kit for each group of 4 for the final build comes to about $1,190 over the same 3 years, Mokxi included.

The instruments are most of the hardware bill. Without the shared benches, the kits and meters alone are a much smaller number, and the calculator lets you switch each instrument off.

Boards

A board on its own, if you are building your own kits or replacing one that died. A compatible board (sometimes called a clone) runs the same code as the official Arduino board it copies.

Starter kits

A starter kit is a board, a breadboard, wires and a box of parts with a project book. The official Arduino kit costs more and comes with a 170-page printed project book; the compatible kits cost less and come with online or PDF tutorials. The SunFounder kit includes a basic multimeter, which saves buying one per group.

Built from loose parts at Adafruit and the Arduino store, a group kit with an UNO R4 Minima, a USB cable, a breadboard, jumper wires, resistors, LEDs, buttons, a potentiometer, an ultrasonic sensor and a temperature sensor comes to $50.30. That is the "build your own" option in the calculator.

Parts that burn out, snap or go missing

These are the parts you will re-buy. An LED wired without its resistor, a sensor put in backwards, 5 volts into a 3.3 volt ESP32 pin, a board dropped on the floor, and the small parts that leave in a pocket. None of it is anyone doing anything wrong; it is what learning with real parts looks like.

We could not find a published rate for how much of a school kit is lost or broken in a year, so we do not quote one. The calculator starts at 15% of the kit value a year and you should replace that with your own experience. If you have kept records, they are better than anything we could give you.

Instruments

A lab is more than kits. Students measuring what their circuit does need a multimeter at least, and a course that gets to timing, PWM or serial benefits from a scope and a logic analyzer. These are entry-level instruments at their list prices, not the cheapest you can find.

One bench with a scope, a logic analyzer, a function generator and a power supply is $837.09. A class usually shares a few benches rather than equipping every pair, which is why the calculator counts them per bench (3 by default) and counts a multimeter per kit.

A class of 30, three ways

Kits only, at list price, before instruments, boxes and breakage.

Then add $322.50 for a meter per pair (15 at $21.50), $2,511.27 for 3 instrument benches, and a box for each kit to keep it together.

The costs that are not on the receipt

Storage

Seventeen kits need a shelf, a box each, and somewhere to live over the summer. We guess $8 a box. A cart or a lockable cabinet costs more, and the space it takes is space you are not using for something else.

Counting everything back in

Someone checks that the kits come back complete: after each lesson, at the end of each unit, and before the kits go away for the summer. The calculator guesses 20 minutes per kit a year, which for 17 kits is 5.7 hours. It shows that time in hours and does not turn it into dollars, because what your time is worth is not ours to say.

Loss and breakage

See the replacement prices above. The cost is small per part and adds up across a year, and a missing sensor on the day of a lesson costs a lesson, not just the part.

Consumables

Jumper wires fray, batteries run down, and if you solder, solder runs out. We guess $5 per kit a year.

Getting real boards to talk to school computers

This is the one that stops projects. The desktop Arduino IDE installs on Windows, macOS and Linux, and on a managed school image that install usually goes through IT. A compatible board with a CH340 USB chip can need a separate driver on some computers. On Chromebooks there is no desktop IDE: Arduino’s route is its online Arduino Cloud Editor, used in the browser or through its Chromebook app (Arduino’s Chromebook guide). That means each student has an Arduino account, which your district may need to approve under its student data privacy process, and your admin may need to allow the app. Arduino’s free Cloud plan allows 25 compilations a day; its School Plan is listed at $20 per seat per year (Arduino Cloud plans). For 30 students that is $600 a year, if you need it.

The same course in Mokxi

Mokxi runs in the browser on the machine in front of the student, Chromebooks included, with nothing to install and no account needed to start. The code is real C++ compiled in the browser and run on simulated boards: the Arduino UNO, the UNO R4, ESP32 boards and more. The parts are on a real breadboard grid, and the instruments are parts you wire in like anything else. All of this is on the free plan.

A frequency counter and a logic probe are there too. The guide to measuring a circuit with the scope and plotter shows what the scope can do.

Students use Mokxi free. A teacher who wants a roster, a starter circuit handed to every student, automatic checks on submissions and the whole class in one live room takes the Teacher plan: $129 a year for up to 40 students, by card or on an invoice against a purchase order. More students or several teachers is priced by quote on the schools page.

What a simulator does not replace

Soldering. The feel of a jumper that is not quite seated. Real electrical noise, a sensor that reads differently in a warm room, and the moment a student realizes the thing on the desk is doing what their code says. Mokxi models a lot, and we say where it stops on the teachers page, but a finished circuit should be tried on real hardware before anyone relies on it. That is why we suggest simulating first and building second rather than never building at all.

Sources

Every price above, where it came from, and when we read it. Prices change; if one has moved, the calculator lets you type the new one.